Google-IBM Deal on PHR: Smoke, no Fire

There aren’t many areas where Google is behind Microsoft but Personal Health Records might be one of them. Then again, the gap may be closing.

Last October, MSFT partnered with Cleveland Clinic and together, they enrolled several hundred of the Clinic’s most intrepid chronic disease patients into a pilot.

The patients are using multiple home monitoring devices to upload data to their Healthvault PHRs.

These heavily leaden HealthVaults are to be shared with Clinic physicians who presumably will have time to peruse all that data and know what to do next.

So when Google announced a PHR deal with IBM last week, people thought surely the 2 tech titans would have also roped in the boys up at Mayo or some place like that in response to MSFT’s deal with the Clinic.

But no, they haven’t gotten that far yet. Basically, IBM’s got software that lets patients upload data from their home monitoring devices into Google Health, so long as the devices comply with Continua Health Alliance standards.

That’s it from 2 companies whose CEOs have been carrying the Big O’s gym bags since Iowa?

Come to think of it, only a few hundred thousand people use Google Health and HealthVault combined, according to Parks Associates. A hundred times that still watch TVs running Rabbit Ears.

Despite that Sameer Samat, director of Google Health said he’s “pretty happy with progress so far” according to the Wall Street Journal. 

Then he got real. “We have had a lot of people who…rave, and probably more people who say it is a great start and here is what we want to see” feature-wise.

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